Guide to starting your new accounting practice

Transcription

1 Guide to starting your new accounting practice Let Clear Books Pro guide and support you during your set up stages for your new practice

2 1. Create a vision statement Know where you want to be in 10 years time. Its the only way you ll get there. Creating a vision statement is one of the first things you need to do once you have decided to start your own practice. You need to have a good idea in your head of exactly what you want your practice to be, and then you can create a business plan to enable you to get there. Above all, make sure that what you are projecting and aiming to achieve is realistic and that you review your plans on a regular basis. Think about the following key aspects: What do you want your firm to be? What do you want to achieve? What will your practice be like 5 years into the future? Picture it and write down everything you can to describe it. Do the same for how it is today. Work out a strategy of how you will get from here to there. Once you have decided you want to start your own practice, you need to decide exactly what that practice will be. Ask yourself as many questions as you can, all based on where you will be in 5 years time. For example - how many clients will I have? Will I have employees and/or use sub-contractors? Will I need partners? What services will I be offering? Use your vision to create a competitive advantage for your practice. Are there other practices offering the same services that you want to offer? If so, work

3 out a way that you can offer that service in a better way. Or is there something you want to offer that no other practices are offering? Or sectors of business you want to concentrate on? These can provide a competitive advantage. Pull this 5 year plan back to now and devise how you will get there on a year by year basis, establishing a business plan and objectives for the short term and the long term. As and when you take on partners and staff make sure they are aware of your strategy so that they can share in it with you. Change is inevitable so keep your vision and plans under annual or even six monthly review, they are not set in stone, so make them a living process taking account of pitfalls and new opportunities as they arise. 2. Choose and attract your ideal clients If you ever speak to other accountants in practice they will tell you that their biggest regret is having taken on clients that they should not have dealt with. When starting out in practice the risk is that you will take on any client that presents themselves, just to get money coming in through the door. New clients will involve a large amount of investment time and this will be wasted if, in 6 months time, you discover you should not have taken them on in the first place. Only take on clients that match the firm s vision and skillset and, if necessary, should you wish to handle clients outside your comfort zone, make sure you retrain or take on new people with the right skillset. When considering a prospective client, treat the meetings and discussions as an interview (with you as the interviewer) and think about the following: Have they used an accountant before, if so, why are they changing, if not what do they know about what an accountant does?

4 What is their record keeping like, will it match what you need, will they be prepared to change to match what you need? Are there areas that they want you to deal with that they could easily do themselves, even with a bit of coaching? The object is to only do things for a client that is of value to them and you. Make sure you are upfront with likely fee rates for the work and unless there is a good reason, do not offer discounts upfront. Guage from responses how important fees are to the prospect s decision to come with you or not. If it s their prime concern then probably best not to take them on. What does your intuition say about how you relate? Working with clients is personal in nature and to to give yourself the best chance of providing a good service it is important that you get on with them. There is never any guarantee that all clients you take on will remain a match or ideal and so, on an annual basis, review your client list and grade them A-D (good to horrible). Then plan in ways to encourage Bs and Cs to move up the list and, at the next opportunity, ask Ds to find another advisor. Every firm is different and so one fiirm s D is another s A and so you have to decide on the criteria to use for your own. Many firms for example value the client recommending them to new clients over the quality of their books. Bear in mind that a client can become a D because of the firm s development, ie the firm moves on from the client. Your website is where prospective clients will go to find out more about you - make it good! 3. Have a website that stands out In this digital age, after initially hearing about you via an internet search, social media, word of mouth or by reading about your practice, a prospective client will go to your website to find out more. It is crucial therefore, that your website makes the right impression and has all of the necessary information.

5 Here are a few things to consider: Include plenty of calls to action Make it easy to contact you Detail all of your services Give SEO a go Look slick Your website is a marketing tool for you to sell yourself, your services and the benefits that they can offer prospective clients. Think about what you want your clients to do - I would imagine the first step you want them to make is getting in touch to arrange a meeting/initial phone call. Have calls to action for this all over your site, at least once on every page. Don t make them have to search for your address or phone number - have them right there with the instructions to call you. Include details of all of the services you offer on your website. Prospective clients won t call you if they don t think you can offer what they want. Put more emphasis on the services that you have chosen to give yourself competitive advantage and that you know your target clients will want, but make sure that everything you can do is on the site somewhere. You never know what people might be looking for. Search engine optimisation is a big area, but learn the basics and give it a go. It s crucial for getting more visitors to your site via internet search engines. Think about what words the people you want to end up on your site will be searching. Maybe it will be tax returns london maybe it will be accountant and payroll. Write down a list of keywords and phrases that you would like to rank highly for in search engine results. Make sure your chosen keywords/phrases are somewhere in the middle between those that are too popular and generic that you have no chance in competing in, such as accountant and those that are far too specific that no one will ever write in the search bar. These keywords must then be littered in the text on your website to help your page rank highly. This is an art, as your content must still be engaging and interested to read, not a dumping ground for relevant keywords. Having a blog on your site is a good way to keep content fresh, make visitors want to come back and also keep those keywords coming. Make sure that your website is designed for ease of use. Prospective clients want to be able to easily navigate around your site and be able to find what they re looking for, or they will just leave. Use lots of titles, bolding, bullet

6 points, short sentences and short paragraphs to make the content of your website easily scannable. Have links to pages on your site so that visitors can easily move between pages, and make sure the links are relevant to the pages they are directing people to. Simple fonts, contrast between text and background and not overloading the site with images will all contribute to making your site slick and easy to navigate around. Not quite sure how to design your site and want some help? Clear Books Pro offers an accountant website design and hosting service, so contact us today to discuss. 4. Select your software packages Clear Books Pro would recommend using cloud based software to enable you to collaborate seamlessly with your clients from anywhere and at any time. This will also eliminate the costly setup and upgrade processes involved with desktop software and further enable you to run a paperless practice. Types of software package to consider: Accounting and bookkeeping Payroll Final accounts production Tax return software Practice management and CRM Document management Clear Books Pro offers Clear Books accounting software, payroll software, final accounts software and practice management software. All of which are fully integrated and in the cloud.